Chris Rojek

Bryan S Turner

Craig Calhoun

Providing an authoritative guide to theory and method, the key sub-disciplines and the primary debates in contemporary sociology, this work brings together the leading authors to reflect on the condition of the discipline.

The SAGE Handbook of Sociology

Mike Featherstone

Mike Hepworth

This challenging volume reasserts the centrality of the body within social theory as a means to understanding the complex interrelations between nature, culture and society. At a theoretical level, the volume explores the origins of a social theory of the body in sources ranging from the work of Nietzsche to contemporary feminist theory. The importance of a theoretical understanding of the body to social and cultural analysis of contemporary societies is demonstrated through specific case studies. These range from the expression of the emotions, romantic love, dietary practice, consumer culture, fitness and beauty, to media images of women and sexuality. This wide-ranging book draws in part on papers published in Theory,

Social Process and Cultural Theory

The Body

In a series of chapters Bryan S. Turner explores various approaches to the body which sociologists have generally neglected, including the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Feuerbach's work on sensualism.

Explorations in Social Theory

The Body and Society

For Weber is recognized widely as one of the most incisive and stimulating books on Weber in the post-war period. Writing in defence of Weber's sociology against the criticism of academic sociology by Marxists such as Louis Althusser, Bryan Turner, a leading Weberian scholar, rejects the view that Weber's sociology is bourgeois, subjectivist and individualistic. This Second Edition, now available in paperback, includes a new Preface which reviews the scholarship on Weber since 1981. The book also provides a survey of the strengths and weaknesses of the major sociological approaches in the post-war period.

Essays on the Sociology of Fate

For Weber

In the last three decades, the human body has gained increasing prominence in contemporary political debates, and it has become a central topic of modern social sciences and humanities. This collection of thirty original essays by leading figures in the field explores these issues across a number of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, with a wide range of case studies.

The Routledge Handbook of the Body

"In this book, one of the foremost sociologists of the present day turns his gaze upon the key figures and seminal institutions in the rise of sociology." "This book is a systematic introduction to classical sociology and its development in the twentiethcentury. Accessible and authoritative, it will be required reading for anyone interested in sociology and social theory today."--BOOK JACKET.

Classical Sociology

"This truly deserves to be considered a classic and I strongly encourage my students to read it from cover to cover. Turner's work on the body needs to be considered in its own right within courses on the sociology of the body." - Dr Robert Meadows, Surrey University "Remains the foundational text for courses in the sociology of the body, replete with insights and a depth of analysis that has largely inspired an entire new area of studies across the social sciences." - Dr Michael Drake, Hull University "This is THE contemporary text for both academics and students exploring the sociology of the body." - Jessica Clark, University Campus Suffolk This is a fully revised edition of a book that may fairly claim to have re-opened the sociology of the body as a legitimate area of enquiry. Providing an unparalleled guide to all aspects of the subject, each chapter has been revised and updated while the book contains new material that reflects both recent changes in the field and Turner's developing position on the centrality of vulnerability. Assured and innovative, this book provides the most authoritative statement of work on the sociology of the body by one of the leading writers in the field.

This challenging volume reasserts the centrality of the body within social theory as a means to understanding the complex interrelations between nature, culture and society. At a theoretical level, the volume explores the origins of a social theory of the body in sources ranging from the work of Nietzsche to contemporary feminist theory. The importance of a theoretical understanding of the body to social and cultural analysis of contemporary societies is demonstrated through specific case studies. These range from the expression of the emotions, romantic love, dietary practice, consumer culture, fitness and beauty, to media images of women and sexuality.

Society and Culture reclaims the classical heritage, provides a clear-eyed assessment of the promise of sociology in the 21st century and asks whether the `cultural turn' has made the study of society redundant. Sociologists have objected to the rise of cultural studies on the grounds that it produces cultural relativism and lacks a stable research agenda. This book looks at these criticisms and illustrates the relevance of a sociological perspective in the analysis of human practice. The book argues that the classical tradition must be treated as a living tradition, rather than a period piece. It analyzes the fundamental principles of belonging and conflict in society and provides a detailed critical survey of the principal social theories that offer solutions to the challenges of modernism.

Scarcity and Solidarity

Society and Culture

Yuri Contreras-Vejar

Joanna Tice Jen

'Regimes of Happiness' is a comparative and historical analysis of how human societies have articulated and enacted distinctive notions of human fulfillment, determining divergent moral, ethical and religious traditions, and incommensurate and conflicting understanding of the meaning of the ‘good life’. A two-part book, it provides a historical view of the way in which Western societies, the descendants of the Latin Roman Empire, created languages and institutions that established specifi c and occasionally antithetical conceptions of a fulfilled human life or ‘happiness’ in the first part. In the second part, it explores how non-Western societies and non-Christian religions have conceived and established their own ideals of human perfection. 'Regimes of Happiness' is a critical reflection on modern notions of happiness which are typically focused on individual feelings of pleasure.

Comparative and Historical Studies

Regimes of Happiness

In the last three decades, the human body has gained increasing prominence in contemporary political debates, and it has become a central topic of modern social sciences and humanities. Modern technologies – such as organ transplants, stem-cell research, nanotechnology, cosmetic surgery and cryonics – have changed how we think about the body. In this collection of thirty original essays by leading figures in the field, these issues are explored across a number of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, including pragmatism, feminism, queer theory, post-modernism, post-humanism, cultural sociology, philosophy and anthropology. A wide range of case studies, which include cosmetics, diet, organ transplants, racial bodies, masculinity and sexuality, eating disorders, religion and the sacred body, and disability, are used to appraise these different perspectives. In addition, this Handbook explores various epistemological approaches to the basic question: what is a body? It also offers a strongly themed range of chapters on empirical topics that are organized around religion, medicine, gender, technology and consumption. It also contributes to the debate over the globalization of the body: how have military technology, modern medicine, sport and consumption led to this contemporary obsession with matters corporeal? The Handbook’s clear, direct style will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience in the social sciences, particularly for those studying medical sociology, gender studies, sports studies, disability studies, social gerontology, or the sociology of religion. It will serve to consolidate the new field of body studies.

Bryan S Turner

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